Hedwig Bollhagen

• Name — Hedwig Bollhagen • Born — 10 November 1907 • Birthplace — Hanover, Germany • Died — 8 June 2001 • Place of death — Oberkrämer, Germany • Known for — Ceramic pots • Website — hedwig-bollhagen.com

Hedwig Bollhagen was raised in a one-parent family in Hanover, where she attended a girl's secondary school. After graduating from this school in 1924, she completed an internship in a pottery in Großalmerode in the same year. After her guest studies at the Staatliche Kunstakademie (State Art Academy) in Kassel, she studied at the Fachschule Höhr-Grenzhausen, a technical school for ceramics, under Eduard Berdel and Hermann Bollenbach from spring of 1925 until summer of 1927. In 1926, she became a trainee in the Hamelner Töpferei (pottery workshop) of Gertrud Kraut in Hameln. From 1927 to 1931, she worked as a designer and head of the painting department at the earthenware factories Steingutfabriken Velten-Vordamm in Velten. After their closure due to a drop in exports as a result of the Great Depression, she began traveling: she first worked at the State Majolica Factory in Karlsruhe, then at the Rosenthal factories in Coburg, the workshop of Wilhelm Kagel in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (until the spring of 1932) and finally, as a "shop girl" in the "Kunst und Handwerk" ("Art and Craft") sales gallery led by Tilly Prill-Schloemann and Bruno Paul in Berlin until February 1933. Until October 1933, she worked in the glazing and painting department of J. Kalscheuer Cie. Steinzeugwerke m.b.H. in Frechen. • Illustration — A butter dish shows the style of her work. When ceramist Nora Herz, who was based in Cologne, learned of the failed resettlement of the Haël Workshops for Artistic Ceramics, founded by ceramist Margarete Heymann and her husband Gustav Loebenstein, Hedwig Bollhagen was able to found the new HB-Werkstätten für Keramik GmbH (HB Workshops for Ceramics) in the old ceramics factory in Velten in 1934 with the help of German politician Heinrich Schild and the participation of Margarete Heymann and Nora Herz. They established themselves with the aid of ceramics master Thoma Countess Grote as a commercial assistant and developer – she had developed glazes for Charles Crodel - and former employees of the ceramics workshop of Bauhaus under Gerhard Marcks such as Theodor Bogler and Werner Burri. The ceramic workshop had emerged from the Steingutfabriken Velten-Vordamm GmbH stoneware factories which were shut down in 1931. In 1935, Charles Crodel added the field of building ceramics to the company and, at the same time, brought to bear his industrial experience in decor development that he gained in the United Lusatian Glassworks when working together with Wilhelm Wagenfeld. In 1939, Hedwig Bollhagen passed her master exam with a vessel painted by Charles Crodel. She became a ceramics master and was able to free the business from the grip of the German Labour Front (DAF), the National Socialist trade union organisation. In 1946, after the end of the Second World War, Heinrich Schild, the main opponent of the DAF and co-founder and unpaid manager of the HB-Werkstätten, returned from the Soviet occupation zone to the Rhineland in West Germany, and Hedwig Bollhagen then assumed sole responsibility for the management of the HB-Werkstätten. In 1972, the workshops were nationalised, but even during the twenty years until it was finally re-privatised in 1992, Bollhagen remained its artistic director and continued to work there until shortly before her death. Her successor as artistic director was Heidi Manthey, a former pupil of Bollhagen's friend Charles Crodel, who Hedwig Bollhagen had worked with since founding the company.

Hedwig Bollhagen was buried in the municipal cemetery of the Stöcken district of Hanover.

Hedwig Bollhagen achieved international fame through her simple, timeless everyday crockery, which, in their form and décor, succeeded in achieving an informal combination of peasant tradition and Bauhaus aesthetics. She herself said: "Art? Oh yes, that's what some people call it. I make plates, cups and jugs." Or more succinctly: "They're just pots!" Bollhagen's work was criticised by the East German head of state Walter Ulbricht, who considered her designs too formal and cosmopolitan.

• Berlin ehrt Hedwig Bollhagen (Berlin Honours Hedwig Bollhagen). 8 October to 13 November 1994. Guest exhibition of the Ceramics Museum Berlin in the Martin Gropius Building Berlin • Hedwig Bollhagen – Unikate (Hedwig Bollhagen – Unique Pieces). 1 to 31 May 1996. Galerie Theis Berlin. • Hedwig Bollhagen. Ein Leben für die Keramik (Hedwig Bollhagen. A Life for Ceramics). 22 June 2007 to 13 January 2008. Museum of Brandenburg-Prussian History, Kutschstall am Neuer Markt, Potsdam • Hedwig Bollhagen (1907–2001) zum 100. Geburtstag (Hedwig Bollhagen (1907–2001) on Her 100th Birthday). 26 August to 31 December 2007. Keramik-Museum Berlin • Töppe, Tassen, Humpen für VEB Stadtgrün u. a. – Präsent- und Auftragskeramik aus den HB-Werkstätten Marwitz (Pots, cups, tankards for VEB Stadtgrün among other – gift and commissioned ceramics from HB-Werkstätten Marwitz) 3 November 2007 to 3 February 2008. Ofen- und Keramikmuseum Velten, Wilhelmstrasse 32, Velten (Mark) • Hedwig Bollhagen – Keramik (Hedwig Bollhagen – Ceramics). Special exhibition, 12 April to 21 September 2008, Ceramics Museum Bürgel • Hedwig Bollhagen. Baukeramik und Denkmalpflege (Hedwig Bollhagen. Building Ceramics and Monument Preservation). 11 February to 13 August 2012. Hedwig Bollhagen Gesellschaft as a guest in the Ceramics Museum Berlin

Hedwig Bollhagen is recorded as having received Order of Merit of Berlin, Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold and National Prize of East Germany.